Stage Directions • April 2019 • USITT 2019

This year was the 59th Conference and Stage Expo for USITT, and it did not disappoint in terms of numbers. It was the largest gathering of exhibitors, 340, ever on the USITT Stage Expo floor. There was also a record-breaking number of attendees with figures north of 6,000. Everyone attending left excited to see what the 60th Anniversary Conference and Stage Expo in Houston next year has in store as USITT continues to be an important part of creating the community that is our industry.

If you missed the show, we have roundup of some of what several exhibitors who advertise with Stage Directions were up to at this year’s USITT Stage Expo. These people support Stage Directions and are a big part of our ability to bring to you the how-to’s, the profiles of theater artisans and the latest theater technology information. Please support them in return; check out their websites, call, write, or visit them for your theater needs.

At this year’s USITT, Contributing Member Barbizon Lighting was celebrating the latest winner of the USITT YDMT Lighting Designer Award, Alice Trent. She is a third year MFA candidate at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. Barbizon has been sponsoring this award for over 20 years, since it was established in 1997 in the memory of founders Sam Resnick and Sid Bloom and 2nd generation owner Jonathan Resnick. Barbizon Lighting also had their booth set up to take free professional headshots of attendees. Their belief is that technicians deserve just as good professional photos as actors. The line was constant throughout the show and everyone left with a great headshot and met lots of fellow artisans. They also had time to learn about all that Barbizon has to offer as a leading dealer in our industry.

CHAUVET Professional sponsored an educational session—Start to Finish–The Designer’s Journey—led by Tony Award-winning Lighting Designer, Jeff Croiter, who offered a step-by-step tour of his creative process behind theatrical lighting design. It was a great success and everyone, including Jeff we believed, enjoyed the session. This year CHAUVET had a range of lighting products in their booth well worth a look, especially its development of affordable LED color mixing fixtures which they demonstrated to the USITT attendees. Among those products really creating interest were its Ovation series of PARs, and consoles from its ChamSys line, which, as all of the CHAUVET lighting products are well suited to solve design challenges.

Attendees lined the City Theatrical booth at USITT 2019 for new product demos, including the multi award-winning DMXcat® Multi Function Test Tool, Lightwright® 6 software, QolorFLEX LED Tape and Dimmers, Multiverse® wireless DMX technology, and more. They also looked at the new City Theatrical Projector Hanger [See page 5 in Tools for more details.]

Change your life and your show with beautiful painting brought to you either by painting it yourself with newly learned skills which Cobalt Studios can teach you, or by having Cobalt Studios paint for you! They specialize in backdrops and scrims and their educational offerings are always fun and skillful.

At USITT 2019, Creative Conners was highlighting its range of clever and affordable automation solutions but this USITT they really out did themselves with the Pushstick Mini winch. It is designed for small, tight spaces and for those places where you only have 120V of power. The Pushstick Mini is the right winch for these conditions—it’s small, lightweight, powerful, and only needs 120V input power. With a zero fleet-angle, its overall dimensions are only 36-inches high x 22-inches deep x 11.5-inches wide; and using 3/16" wire rope, there is room for 85-feet of travel.

At USITT 2019, the Eartec Company was highlighting its Interface series of products. The HUB-INT interface is a simple affordable way to add full duplex wireless headsets to most popular wired intercoms. Each complete interface package includes a HUB mini base and a software-controlled interface. The interface connects the HUB to a wall jack or rack-mounted power console. Signal level adjustments create a seamless audio link to any combination of up to eight transceivers. Roaming wireless users can communicate with wired headsets hands-free, simultaneously, and without interconnecting cables.

Elation Professional took the opportunity to showcase its comprehensive range of innovative lighting fixtures optimized for theatre and production environments from discharge to LED, full color to white light. As one of the world’s leading entertainment lighting manufacturers, Elation Professional offers a line of professional lighting fixtures optimized for virtually any type of theatre application. Made up of a spirited team of dedicated professionals, the company is setting new efficiency and performance standards in Platinum lamp, LED and hybrid technology and is acknowledged for a comprehensive commitment to Total Support.

With the range of products and ETC’s years of supporting students and early career theater personnel, the ETC and High End Systems booths were jam-packed throughout the Stage Expo. People were lining up to get hands-on demos of the latest lighting and rigging gear, including the Relevé Spot, Foundation and Prodigy, as well as Hog 4, and Sola Series products. There were demonstrations of Eos v3.0 with several software advances, including ETC’s first integrated 3D programming environment: Augment3d, which is going into beta-testing this summer. This new and exciting tool allows Eos users to control and design in a three-dimensional space. And with fully integrated augmented reality technology in the Eos remote apps, Eos v3.0 puts the power of Augment3d in the palm of your hand. It looks very interesting and it continues the boundary pushing—and category defying—that ETC Founder and CEO Fred Foster always preached. We will be covering this developing technology as it progresses into users’ theaters.

The GLP team demonstrated its new white LED engine profile fixture, the impression S350, along with the impression FR1, and the updated impression X4 RGBY theatre range. The GLP impression FR1 brings a new level of versatility and quality with one of the most compact automated lighting packages available today. Optical quality is at the forefront of the impression FR1 providing a clean, homogenized output at all angles, always giving a clean beam from center to its extreme edge.

The crowd of attendees at the InCord booth during the Stage Expo were interested in learning more about InCord’s Orchestra Pit Safety Netting Systems. They are designed specifically to meet each individual user’s requirements. The company can provide virtually any size and shape safety net, made using its knotless high tenacity polypropylene (HTPP) material, and designed specifically for your unique application. Be sure to check with InCord on how industrydemanded Orchestra Pit Nets and StageGuard™ can protect and save your personnel. Any space serious about safety should look at what InCord is offering and realize you cannot afford not to have such proctection.

iWeiss has 120 years of experience in drapery manufacturing that they are now combining with the development of the company’s Align Rigging and Via automation products. Attendees got to learn more about both rigging and automation products at USITT 2019. iWeiss is the only company with the ability to provide you with fabric, drapery, curtain tracks, manual rigging and automated rigging all under one roof.

Maine State Music Theatre (MSMT) was happy to be part of the 2019 USITT Conference. MSMT is celebrating its 61st year of bringing Broadway-quality shows to the coast of Maine. Many attendees stopped by the MSMT Costumes booth to speak about their future costume rental needs, see the quality of the work, as well as to see the wide range of complete show packages the company has to offer!

Point Source Audio brought backup to USITT. Making its debut at USITT 2019 was a new class of performance microphones—the CO2 Confidence Collection that arrived in style for the first time at the USITT Stage Expo. The patent pending redundant microphones are equally pretty in headset, lavalier, or EMBRACE™ earmount styles. You could listen to the new product throughout the conference sessions as PSA was the Official Headworn Mic of USITT 2019. They also proudly sponsored the Sound Commission Reception. For more on the CO2 Confidence Collection microphones and their use at USITT 2019, please see page 34 in this issue.

The team from Rose Brand was celebrating Katy Fetrow, the winner of the USITT Scene Design Award, which has been sponsored by Rose Brand since 1997. Fetrow is an MFA candidate in Scenic Design at Carnegie Mellon University, graduating in May of 2019. She has also been included in the Emerging Artist portion of the 2019 USA Prague Quadrennial exhibition. This award was established in 1997 by George Jacobstein, President of Rose Brand, a USITT Contributing Member. This was the first show that Rose Brand exhibited at where they also exhibit with Automatic Devices Company’s (ADC) products. The double sided booth worked great and attendees got to see both sides of this merger. [Rose Brand acquired the Automatic Devices Company of Allentown, PA in March of 2018.]

From Broadway to community theater, Shure microphones and wireless systems have been trusted by live productions worldwide. At USITT 2019, Shure’s booth was packed with people taking a good listen, and long look at the Axient Digital micro-bodypack ADX1M and they also got a sneak peek at a very cool new product. If you were at the show, you might have glimpsed this new product but if you missed it be sure to read all about in the May issue of Stage Directions magazine! [Sorry, no spoilers, it doesn’t officially launch until early April.]

At USITT 2019, the team from Theatreworld Backdrops was happy to discuss scenic design as well as sharing the news that its continuing to produce brand new backdrops every month. In addition to developing a myriad of fresh designs, its teams will be introducing drops in up to four sizes. From 20-feet x 10-feet to 48-feet x 20-feet, the company feels that no stage professional should be at a loss for the imagery that they want, simply based upon the size of their staging area. Expect new show packages for soon to be released productions and individual backdrops that provide customers with more options for particular scenes in the very near future.

Turning Star was displaying its range of theatrical fire-retardant products and services. In addition to the company’s line of Roscoflamex products it manufactures, they discussed its treatment, testing, and certification services for shows and venues. Turning Star is is backed by extensive knowledge of codes and regulations, and experience of treating almost everything you can think of. Customers like to think that they have a surprise material for Turning Star, but most likely, they’ve probably already done it.